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Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

reuters.com

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Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#91

Post by trenchgun »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #78
bilal4hmed wrote: post #7

How many are left after whatsapp returned ? The same thing happen when Signal took off, followed by 3 days of outage that to date has had no explanation. All those people joined and promptly returned to WhatsApp

From my experience, many friends in Iran strongly prefer Telegram even though it is blocked there are WhatsApp (inexplicably, since they are nearly the same service) isn't. So there does seem to be some brand loyalty in the chat market besides for convenience. I suspect in general their losses were far greater in chat than in Instagram. Most students in the US use both Insta and Snap already and just have some overla…

Telegram offers the absolute best user experience IMHO.

I would love to use Signal, but I can't really stand it.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#92

Post by znpy »

AdamHominem wrote: post #80
notRobot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that telegram chats are not e2e encrypted by default.

And that it uses a proprietary encryption protocol, "MTProto", which has been repeatedly found to have vulnerabilities, like every other self-made encryption scheme. Now add in the fact that it's a UAE company...

You're misusing the term proprietary here.

Telegram's protocol might be custom, but it's well described and there are open source client implementations.

Whatsapp is totally closed and non-interoperable.

And whatsapp is made by an US company, that's an assurance for data collection and massive surveillance.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#93

Post by SergeAx »

AdamHominem wrote: post #80
notRobot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that telegram chats are not e2e encrypted by default.

And that it uses a proprietary encryption protocol, "MTProto", which has been repeatedly found to have vulnerabilities, like every other self-made encryption scheme. Now add in the fact that it's a UAE company...

> which has been repeatedly found to have vulnerabilities

No, it has not. Recent research by seasoned encryption experts found minor bugs in realization, mostly around messages order. @see https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/07/fou...

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#94

Post by approxim8ion »

ggregoire wrote: post #86

Makes me wonder if people even remember that SMS is a thing. Seems to me like the most obvious solution when your communication app is temporarily unavailable. Instead of the annoying process to look for an alternative app, download it, sign in, add contacts… just for a few hours. Or people thought Whatsapp & Messenger were gone forever and they were looking for a long term replacement?

SMS isn't a viable option for a lot of people. It's probably the least private or secure form of messaging available, and quite often isn't very reliable, at least in my country.. I understand when you say it is a fallback, but it's a very lousy one in my opinion.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#96

Post by tasogare »

otachack wrote: post #77
AdamHominem wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not particularly thrilled, given Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates, its client-server encryption is almost purposefully garbage (they basically rolled their own TLS, and predictably researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in "MTProto"), they don't enable e2ee chats by default, and they don't e2ee group chats at all. Do. Not. Use. Telegram.

Don't use it for e2e, then? There are plenty other solutions for incredibly sensitive chats (Signal, Tox, etc) I think Telegram is a good trade off for group chats, personally. It's feature rich compared to others.

Signal is asking phone number to use, I don't see how this is good for sensitive communication (since metadata alone are often very informative).

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#97

Post by noahtallen »

ggregoire wrote: post #86

Makes me wonder if people even remember that SMS is a thing. Seems to me like the most obvious solution when your communication app is temporarily unavailable. Instead of the annoying process to look for an alternative app, download it, sign in, add contacts… just for a few hours. Or people thought Whatsapp & Messenger were gone forever and they were looking for a long term replacement?

I mean, SMS or even MMS is a terrible standard for modern chats, especially group chats. Compared to Telegram, it’s slower, has terrible multimedia support, poor UX, limits on group size, limits on character counts, etc. Not to mention security or privacy. Plus, most of the group chat apps will integrate with contacts and your phone number anyways.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#98

Post by ggregoire »

approxim8ion wrote: post #94
ggregoire wrote: post #86

Makes me wonder if people even remember that SMS is a thing. Seems to me like the most obvious solution when your communication app is temporarily unavailable. Instead of the annoying process to look for an alternative app, download it, sign in, add contacts… just for a few hours. Or people thought Whatsapp & Messenger were gone forever and they were looking for a long term replacement?

SMS isn't a viable option for a lot of people. It's probably the least private or secure form of messaging available, and quite often isn't very reliable, at least in my country.. I understand when you say it is a fallback, but it's a very lousy one in my opinion.

You raise a good point, although I doubt 70 millions of people were actually looking for a "private or secure form of messaging". They wouldn't use Facebook/WhatsApp/Messenger in the first place if it was the case.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#99

Post by AegirLeet »

otachack wrote: post #77
AdamHominem wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not particularly thrilled, given Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates, its client-server encryption is almost purposefully garbage (they basically rolled their own TLS, and predictably researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in "MTProto"), they don't enable e2ee chats by default, and they don't e2ee group chats at all. Do. Not. Use. Telegram.

Don't use it for e2e, then? There are plenty other solutions for incredibly sensitive chats (Signal, Tox, etc) I think Telegram is a good trade off for group chats, personally. It's feature rich compared to others.

Any messaging app that allows users to communicate without E2EE is actively harmful.

Re: Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage

#100

Post by holler »

AdamHominem wrote: post #71
don-code wrote: post #30

I'm actually quite thrilled that end users found a way to communicate in spite of "the everyday solution" being down. That gives me some hope that smaller vendors do stand a chance against incumbents, even in Facebook's space.

I'm not particularly thrilled, given Telegram is based in the United Arab Emirates, its client-server encryption is almost purposefully garbage (they basically rolled their own TLS, and predictably researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in "MTProto"), they don't enable e2ee chats by default, and they don't e2ee group chats at all. Do. Not. Use. Telegram.

99.999% of people simply don't care about e2e, and even if they may have some concern about privacy (most don't), they'll prioritize a top-notch UI that let's them talk with friends and family over anything else.

For the remaining people who are concerned about privacy there are plenty of options.

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